Kindle For iOS Adds New Features For Visually Impaired

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cynthia
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May 6, 2013 @ 9:00 AM
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New accessibility options for the blind and visually impaired have been added to the Kindle app for iPhones and iPads, making it easier for customers to navigate their Kindle libraries and interact with their books.

“We’re excited to introduce these new features to our Kindle for iOS app, making it easier than ever for our blind and visually impaired customers to access the vast selection of over 1.8 million books in the Kindle Store on their iPhone or iPad,” said Dorothy Nicholls, Vice President, Amazon Kindle.

Navigate by voice within their library of books and within a book with consistent title, menu and button names.

Sort books in their library by author and title using voice.

Choose the options having the book read aloud character-by-character, word-by-word, line-by-line or continuously.

Highlight specific parts of books and make notes.

Kevin Daniel, who participated in the test of the app said, “Frankly, due to continued vision loss and vision changes, I hadn’t read very much at all. Now, I’ve read more books in the past few weeks than in the last five years.”

Currently these features are only available for the iOS apps, but Amazon promises they will be added to other Kindle apps in the future. There is also an accessibility option plug-in available fro Kindle for PC.